Category Archives: PC

Death Race 2007

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I was starting to get concerned, but HL2:Ep2 definitely improved tonight, perhaps due to one major factor: running over things is fun. ;) Especially Hunters, which die in a single hit if you’re going fast enough, and it’s often easier than trying to take them down in a straight firefight.

There was one point at which Alyx and I got pinned down in a house and had to fend off multiple Hunters and Combine troops without the help of the car, and that was probably the best, most tense battle of the episode so far. The Hunters break into the house itself and will shred you to pieces unless you effectively use the hallways and stairs for cover.

The night ended by arriving at the place we’ve been seeking all along, and I’m probably pretty close to the end based on the achievement list. Speaking of which, I got a whole bunch more of them tonight since a lot of them depended on getting to certain parts of the story or having the car. Again, I wound up doing things I might not have bothered with before (stealing grenades, racing D0G, etc.) if not for the achievements.

But Does Freeman Have A Valid License?

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A bit more progress in HL2:Ep2 tonight, though I seem to be taking it a lot more slowly than most people, as I’ve only just gotten to the car after 5 hours in.

Not too much of note happened tonight; it was mostly just crawling through some mines and an industrial yard, fighting zombies/zombines, with a couple set piece battles that weren’t all that tough or interesting. In one I had to hold off waves of zombies while Alyx sniped them, and that took a few tries, but it was fairly easy once I figured out the trick. I’m hoping it picks up a bit now that I have the car.

I picked up a couple more achievements, one for one of the set pieces and the one I’d been working on for kills with thrown items, so now I can go back to using more conventional weapons for the rest of the episode and not having to try for tricky gravity gun kills. I definitely can’t get the grub achievement now though, and I’ve also missed the garden gnome needed for one of the more difficult achievements. If I want to get those, it’ll take another run through the episode. Which I was going to do anyway for the developer commentary nodes, but you can’t get achievements while in that mode, so I’d need a total of three runs through. I think those achievements can wait for a while…

Is There A Can Of Raid For Antlions?

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I got a bit further in HL2:Ep2 today, and it’s been nothing but antlions, antlions, and more antlions. Including a new variant, the acid antlion, and they’ve actually got a decent AI. They’ll try to stick to their strong long-range attack, hide behind obstacles when not firing, and try to sneak up on you if you retreat.

In the middle there was a defend-this-spot battle involving turrets, and it was simultaneously less and more frantic than a similar battle in the original HL2 (at Nova Prospekt). You only have two turrets to take care of this time, they don’t fall down so easily, and you’ve got backup from a couple other NPCs, but things get tense at the end when it’s difficult to avoid being overrun.

I also had a vortigaunt for a companion instead of Alyx for a while, and their shock attack is pretty powerful. After a while all the third-person pseudo-praise you get from him gets a bit discomfiting. “Ah, this seems like a situation for which the Freeman is uniquely suited!” “Um, yeah, thanks…again…”

I hope I’m done with antlions for the rest of the episode, as I’m kind of sick of them now and I’ve completed the web cache achievement and almost got the squish-all-grubs achievement (328 of 333). I’m getting close to that kills-with-thrown-objects achievement, too (26 of 30), which was tough to try for up to this point since there isn’t much to throw around with the grav gun inside the antlion nest.

I Wish My 360 Had Half A Life

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Well, I was going to play with Halo 3’s theater mode mode to get a screenshot of the Ghost collision I mentioned before, but my 360 has decided that tonight is a red ring night. Maybe it’ll be more cooperative tomorrow…

I fired up HL2:Ep2 (finally) instead, but didn’t get very far into it. About the only notable thing so far is encountering the new Hunter enemy, though I didn’t get to fight it. The Vortigaunt model has been completely redone, so they don’t look quite so bad next to the rest of the NPCs anymore.

The other big thing that’s new with Ep2 and the rest of the Orange Box is the introduction of ‘achievements’ to Steam, similar to the 360’s but without the point values. Trying to get achievements gives you a bit of extra challenge, extends the game a bit, and of course, lets you prove your bragging about your ‘leet skillz.’ It’s already changing how I approach Ep2 as I now first try to kill enemies with the gravity gun instead of conventional weapons, in order to try for the “kill 30 enemies with thrown objects” achievement.

That’s Enough Thinking With Portals

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I didn’t get around to HL2:Ep2 today, opting instead to continue messing around with Portal.

I ran through it again with the developer commentary on, and it was much quicker this time, only taking two and a half hours and a chunk of that was just waiting while listening to the commentaries.

Then I tried some of the ‘bonus maps’, which are split into two types: advanced levels, and challenges. The advanced levels take the last six puzzle levels and make them a lot harder, restricting where you can place portals, making the necessary timing on jumps tighter, removing cubes and floor spots, etc. They are indeed tougher, but I managed to get through four of them without too much frustration.

The challenge levels take those same six puzzle levels and leave the layout intact, but now you have to complete them within certain limits on the number of portals placed, steps taken, or time elapsed. These challenges are *much* tougher and I’m not sure I’ll be able to do most of them, based on my few puny attempts tonight.

I can’t waste too much time on Portal right now though. Episode 2 still awaits!

Is It Orange Cake?

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Well, the next two games I had intended to play were both on the 360, but I can’t really trust it at the moment. Although it did boot up a couple more times after this latest red ring, it’ll just keep getting worse and worse if my previous system is any indication.

So, I needed a new game to play, and hey, that Orange Box thingie was finally unlocked last night… I played through Portal first, since I knew it was shorter, and it was more intriguing since it’s fairly different from the others. It’s a series of puzzles, where you have to use a portal gun to move yourself and other objects around to get past barriers, trigger switches, and so on, by shooting portals at walls that then let you move between those spots.

Or at least that’s how it starts out, but as you approach the end of the puzzles, there’s a bit of a twist. I’m not going to spoil it, but at that point you realize that the puzzles were really just an extended tutorial, and now the real challenge begins. And the final battle and the credits sequence are just hilariously awesome.

It’s a really short game, which only took me around three and a half hours, but it’s a great game all the way through. And I still have to go back and redo it with the developer commentary, and there are some advanced puzzles and time challenges to do as well. It definitely helps make The Orange Box a worthwhile value.

Portal was a pleasant surprise, but Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is what I really got the Orange Box for, and I’ll probably start it tomorrow.

Not In The Cards

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Firing up EQ last night reminded me that Sony Online also recently released a collectible card game variant of EQ, and all current players get a free starter deck, so I downloaded the client for that, fired it up, and started the tutorial.

And then quit it halfway through the tutorial. It looks like a decent enough CCG, but I’ve only played them before as minigames like Arcomage in the M&M series or Pazaak in KotOR, and it quickly became clear that this was going to be a fairly daunting, complex one along the lines of MtG. It would take quite a bit of effort to learn it deeply enough to be good at it, and I don’t really have time for that right now.

The Waiting Game

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Having finished Super Metroid, I don’t really want to start anything new right now since my 360 is close to being returned, and anything new would just get set aside again as soon as it arrives.

Instead, tonight was spent meandering around a bit. I tried to check out Hexen, from the “id megapack” I bought on Steam a while back, but I got stuck between a rotating panel and a wall at one point, and trying to reload the game caused it to crash. I was using the zDoom engine rather than the ‘real’ one, which is probably the real problem, but zDoom adds too many enhancements not to use it.

I downloaded the new Picross DS packs for this week and completed a handful more puzzles, but mainly the easier ones. I’m getting closer to the end of the built-in puzzles though, as I’m up to level 7 (of 10) in Free mode now.

And finally I popped onto WoW and EverQuest briefly just to see if there was anything interesting going on. But there wasn’t. At least not anything obvious; you really have to wander around, inquire a bit, and do some research to find out what’s new, but I started a bit too late in the evening to bother with that.

Forsooth And Prithee, Mine Liege

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While waiting for the Japanese Grand Prix to start I figured I’d kill some time by installing Two Worlds, and played it for about ten minutes. It looks like it might be a half-decent action-RPG gameplay-wise, though not quite as polished as Oblivion. The critics are right, though — the people are kinda ugly, and the cutscenes are just *horrible*. Poor voice acting, poor framing and animation, and poorly written dialogue in overly flowery Elizabethan English.

It might still be fun though, just as long as I can beat up plenty of monsters and take their stuff.

A Productive Day

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For certain definitions of ‘productive’…

I finished Halo 2 this morning, and it turns out I was wrong, the last level was indeed an Arbiter level. Given that, and the relatively abrupt, incomplete ending, I can see how people might have been pissed off when it was first released. I should have my 360 back and be able to play 3 soon though, so I won’t have to wait like they had to.

The final two levels turned out to be a lot shorter and easier than I expected. Only the Tartarus fight was really any difficult, mostly because it was hard to jump around to avoid his insta-kill melee attack with all the pillars and debris around. I didn’t get the achievement for completing the game, though, and I suspect it’s because I missed the achievement for one of the previous levels and I’d have to redo it. Oh well, I can always come back and get it later if I need an easy 130 gamerscore points.

After that I figured I’d finish off another shooter, SiN Episodes: Emergence. I got it over a year ago, but it wasn’t all that great, so it was set aside and forgotten for a while. I turned on godmode and blew through the unfinished bits in an hour or so just to see if there were any interesting surprises to come, but no. Its main fault was that there just wasn’t enough variety to it; not enough different weapons, not enough different areas, not enough different enemies (in the last level it was pretty much the same two soldier types over and over again), and not enough set piece battles. The audio outtakes after the credits were a bit amusing, though.

After that I completed a few more courses in Excite Truck, finally finishing the Bronze series. I put this one aside because I was originally frustrated at getting stuck on only the second course, coming just barely under the number of stars needed three times in a row, but it was no problem this time for some reason. Still, I doubt I’ll ever get the complete set of wins and S-ranks needed to unlock everything, though. It’s not really my type of racing game (on the realistic vs. arcadey scale, it’s off in fantasyland), but it’s good in occasional short bursts.

And finally, I played a bit more of Super Metroid via the Wii’s VC and managed to get quite a few items (high jump boots, spazer, Varia suit, speed booster, ice beam, grappling beam) and defeat Kraid and the Crocomire. I’ll probably be able to finish this one tomorrow.